Where Jews stand

After reading this guy for quite a while, I wasn't sure how he'd come out on the whole Gaza tragedy. I think this is admirable:

It’s not so simple that one can just root for the Palestinians or root for the Jews. I recognize the rights of self-definition and self-determination for both Jews and Palestinians and that includes their rights to statehood and to defend their states from attack.

After quite a while reading Phoebe, I was confident where she'd come out on the whole Gaza tragedy. I wasn't, however, certain how she'd express herself. I've deleted the actual quote I'd selected, because Phoebe's at least a tad concerned about being misread - and I'm embarrassed that I left myself quite open to being misread on how I feel about her post with a certain choice of words. She's frustrated by others who say things like that Jews control the media. Go read the post, but I'll offer something from Phoebe in comments to the post:

What keeps getting missed in terms of the psychology of all of this is exactly what the relationship is between Israel and Holocaust memory. It's not that we (i.e. Jews, i.e. I speak for myself) think Israel is some kind of reparations. It's more that we (same 'we') do not find it super convincing whenever pro-Palestinian Westerners announce that everyone but the U.S. condemns Israel's latest who knows what, existence, military operation, it doesn't matter. We remember that everyone but the U.S. and not too many others was, not that long ago, prepared to rid the world of Jews, offering up many of the same arguments now used against Israel.

And, one more, for good measure:

Let’s say, together, that we want for Israel a just and lasting peace. Safety. A place in the world. That we will defend their right to exist, that Israel is not alone. And let’s add that when we refuse to condone the kind of violence that uses cluster bombs in highly populated civilian areas (especially when an estimated third of cluster bomb casualties are children), we see ourselves engaged in a battle for Israel, too–for its soul. This is not moral solipsism; this is love. And more than that, this is practicality. This is understanding that there may be a time for armed conflict, but armed conflict should not be our first and only approach to diplomacy. The kind of military engagement Israel uses to deal with the essentially political question of Palestine has ceased working.